[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 21 (Tuesday, February 6, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S406-S407]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Supplemental Funding
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, this is unbelievable. Like, I can't
believe this is happening. We were all here. This wasn't a dream. This
really happened.
Republicans all stood up and said that they wanted a bipartisan bill
to fix the border. The border is a priority. The border is a crisis.
We delivered a bipartisan bill to fix the border with the Republican
Senator appointed by the Republican caucus to cut the deal. And within
24 hours, before the ink was even dry, Republican Senators decided they
don't want a bipartisan bill to fix the border. They want to pretend
they never asked for a bipartisan border bill because what they
actually want is chaos because that is what Donald Trump says he wants.
What the hell just happened?
Here is what happened--because the facts are just the facts. In
October, Republicans refused to support funding for Ukraine. They voted
against stopping Putin from making Kyiv a Russian city, not because
they opposed Ukraine funding, they said, no, because they demanded that
Ukraine funding be paired with bipartisan border reforms.
Democrats took them at their word. America took Republicans at their
word that these two things had to be combined. Republicans appointed a
lead negotiator--one of their most conservative Members, a serious
legislator--Senator Lankford, an unquestioned border hawk.
I represented the Democratic caucus in those negotiations. Now, I
will be honest with you, a lot of my friends told me that I was crazy.
They told me that I was hopelessly naive, that Republicans are never
going to agree to a bipartisan bill to fix the border. This is just a
setup. You shouldn't go into the negotiating room. It is a trap. But I
did because, you know what, I am an optimist, maybe a hopeless
optimist.
I still believe that when people say things in this body, they mean
what they say. And I do believe that the border is a mess. It is too
chaotic. We can't handle 10,000 people crossing on some days.
And I believe the asylum system is broken, and my constituents,
whether they be right or left, believe the asylum system is broken. It
shouldn't take 10 years to process an asylum claim, especially when the
majority of those asylum claims are ultimately rejected.
And so I went into the room skeptical that we could get a deal but
sincere because my party actually wants to fix the problem at the
border, and we are willing to reach out across the aisle and find a
compromise in order to do it.
And so we met for months every day. We took Thanksgiving off. We took
Christmas off. But that was it because Republicans told us that they
wanted a bipartisan border deal. We met every Saturday, every Sunday.
We worked straight through the holidays because we saw an opportunity
to cut through the politics, to get a bipartisan agreement done, to
finally start fixing the border.
We saw that opportunity because Republican Senators told the country
that if we could find an agreement with their appointed negotiator on
border policy, that they would support it, and they would support
funding for Ukraine.
And against the odds, we made the deal. We actually achieved the
compromise. And here is just a snapshot of what it does: It allows the
President to close portions of the border on those days when 10,000
people are crossing, to funnel people who are applying for asylum in a
much more orderly manner, to make sure that you don't have those
chaotic scenes that we have watched on the news.
It reforms the asylum system, a comprehensive reform, so that it
doesn't take 10 years to get your asylum claim adjudicated; it will
take months. And it screens individuals so that no longer are we going
to let people into the country who don't have a likely positive claim
of asylum.
It allows more people to come into the country legally. We expand
visas so that folks can find nonasylum pathways to come to the country
or reunite with family or to work. It speaks to our values by making
sure that the most vulnerable people who come to the country, like
young, unaccompanied kids have an advocate standing next to them when
they are making their case for an asylum claim.
It honors the commitment we made to our Afghan partners by allowing
those individuals who are in the country today to have a pathway to
citizenship. And it speaks to the nightmare in many cities where you
have immigrants who can't work on the streets and in homeless shelters.
It makes sure that we get more immediate work permits to individuals
who do have legitimate claims for asylum.
This bill is not comprehensive immigration reform, but it would fix
the crisis at the border. It would immediately give the President tools
to start better managing the border.
We released the text of the bill on Sunday night at 7 p.m., the first
serious bipartisan compromise on border policy in a decade, a
breakthrough, a real chance for this Nation to come together on an
issue--immigration--that too often divides us. And within 24 hours, by
7 p.m. Monday night, almost every single Senate Republican, including
the Senate Republicans who set us on the mission 4 months ago, declared
that they wouldn't support it. For some of them, it didn't even take
that long.
When the text of the bill came out, Senator Lee tweeted that ``it's
370 pages long. Time to start reading.'' Three minutes later, he
tweeted again that ``no self-respecting Senator should vote for this
bill.'' That is either record time for reading a 370-page bill or, more
likely, Senator Lee didn't even open the PDF.
What happened? How did Senate Republicans tell us they wanted a
bipartisan bill only to end up opposing the very bill that they asked
for?
Well, here is the simple truth, and there is no way around this:
Republicans don't want to fix the border. They want the border to
remain chaotic. They want the asylum system to remain broken because
Republicans in this country don't view the border as a problem to fix
anymore. They view it as a problem that needs to be exploited.
Senate Republicans have been pretty unapologetic about just wanting
to keep this issue open as an election issue. Less than 24 hours after
the text came out, one Senator launched killtheborderbill.com, a
website to fundraise for his campaign. Senator Barrasso said today that
he can't support the bill; that Americans should just go to the
upcoming election to solve the border crisis.
[[Page S407]]
Maybe I am a sucker. Maybe I should be mad at myself, but, yes, I
believed that there were enough Senate Republicans of good faith who
would actually support Senator Lankford's sincere efforts to work to
achieve a bipartisan fix, but I was wrong.
Senator Lankford doesn't matter. What his colleagues have put him
through is unforgiveable. Senator McConnell doesn't matter. The
migrants and regular Americans who are getting screwed by a broken
immigration system and a broken border don't matter. There is only one
person who matters to Republicans, and his name is Donald Trump.
Donald Trump made it clear last month. He told Republicans they
should oppose any bipartisan bill to fix the border, and he meant it.
To Trump it didn't matter at all what the policy, what the substance
was. His only advice was kill any bipartisan bill. Why? Because
President Trump wants to win an election, and if the border is fixed by
a bipartisan bill, then that hurts his reelection chances.
Trump wants chaos at the border because it helps him personally. He
asked Republicans to back him, and nearly every single Senator did
exactly that less than 48 hours after introduction of this bill.
This country should be outraged. Regular people out there don't think
this is a game. They don't think that the only thing that matters is
Donald Trump's election odds. They do think the border is broken.
They have spent the last 40 years hearing about how the border is a
problem, but they don't see any action from Congress. They are sick of
this, and they want the two parties to come together to fix the
problem. And they are going to be furious to find out that when
Republicans here had the chance to support a bipartisan bill that they
requested, that they asked for, almost every single Senate Republican
opposed that bill because Donald Trump wants to keep the chaos.
There used to be a difference between House Republicans and Senate
Republicans. I used to explain this fact to my constituents all the
time. I defended my Senate Republican colleagues. I explained how Trump
doesn't control the Senate Republican caucus like he controls the
House, but I don't think that is true any longer.
I think this conference is just as big a mess as the conference in
the House. And that is terrible for the border, which will remain a
wreck because Republicans have just chosen to keep it that way. That is
terrible for Ukraine, which will soon be overrun by Russia because
Republicans have chosen to leave it undefended.
And that is terrible for America because the one group of Republicans
who used to be able to exercise original thought and independent
judgment now just seems to be another subsidiary of the Trump campaign.
I yield the floor.
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